Antonio Margarito was the toast of boxing last week. Now he could become its latest example of going from adored to despised in a matter of hours.

The California State Athletic Commission is examining two pieces of harden gauze that were part of Margarito’s hand wraps before Saturday night’s WBA welterweight championship fight with Shane Mosley at the Staples Center.

Should the CSAC see and hear enough evidence to warrant a suspension or fine of Margarito and his team, it would taint the Mexican’s legacy and all but ruin his chances of reaching the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Clearly, this decision is the most important of his career.

“He’s tainted everything he has done,” Hall of Fame trainer and HBO broadcaster Emanuel Steward said yesterday. “Now you’ve got a situation where every fighter that he has fought is wondering, ‘Did he do that to me?’ I hate this happened because it makes it where there are questions about everybody he has fought.”

Margarito, 30, turned pro when he was 15, but has only recently reached the mega-bout status, including a career-defining victory over Miguel Cotto last July in Las Vegas. Margarito wore down the previously unbeaten Cotto, battering him into a bloody mess in 11 rounds.

Now the question is whether Margarito had loaded wraps for that fight, too. “Now the biggest victory of his career is being questioned,” Steward said.

Margarito’s dominance over Cotto was one reason a record crowd of 20,820 fans filled the Staples Center for the Mosley fight. But after the two hardened blocks were discovered by Mosley’s trainer Naazim Richardson, Margarito had no chance against Mosley, losing by TKO in the ninth round. Coincidence?

“I don’t think anybody would have beaten Shane that night,” Richardson said, “but with that plaster in there, it might have made it a little rougher.”

The CSAC has said it would render a decision “promptly,” and could hand down a not-guilty verdict of sorts with no fine or suspension. But confiscation of “hardened” evidence appears damning.

The CSAC has some explaining to do as well. For one, why did it allow the wrapping of one of Margarito’s hands before a representative of the Mosley camp was present as required; and why did the CSAC rep not see the harden gauze during the wrapping? It was only after Richardson persisted in “feeling” both wraps were the hardened blocks of gauze discovered.

“I can’t see how somebody with all these inspectors let something like that go over their heads,” Steward said.

The Margarito camp insisted on Saturday night that it was only extra gauze and the incident has been blown out of proportion. Calls to the office of Margarito’s co-manager Sergio Diaz yesterday were not returned for a second straight day. Margarito’s promoter, Top Rank Inc., is in a precarious situation because it promotes Cotto as well.